Getting your Affiliate Marketing Business out of Low Gear
It is pretty much common knowledge that most people who get into affiliate marketing don't end up making much, if any money from it
. A lot of people are just looking for easy money. They hear about all of these "internet millionaires" and figure they can get in on the action. Coming into it with this mindset, their chances of success are very slim (maybe better than playing the lottery, but probably not much better). But, there are a lot of affiliates who realize that success doesn't come overnight and still don't get far beyond making a few bucks a month (maybe just enough to cover their costs and a make little profit). If you are in this boat, you have a lot of company. You may not be a true affiliate marketing newbie anymore, but you are far from your goal of becoming a super-affiliate. So, what can you do to kick your business up a notch? Here are a few things to think about.
Read up
There are hundreds of bloggers writing about affiliate marketing. Some are super-affiliates who promote their own training programs and others are just everyday affiliates posting about their struggles and triumphs in the space. Not all blogs are created equal, but most of the people who post regularly tend to have something interesting to say about the industry. Some provide information on programs they run or tactics that have worked for them. Others are a bit more general, but can still include great information you can use in your business.
If you haven't already, you should come up with a list of blogs that you check out on a regular basis. If you don't know where to start, take a look at
Affbuzz. It includes a good sized list of affiliate marketing related blogs, along with links to the most recent posts from each one. Set aside time each week (or each day) when you will skim through any new posts on your blog list. As you read each post, look for information you can actually implement in your marketing programs or business plans. You won't find something every day, but over time you should come across a number of ideas that can help you move your business in the right direction.
Stay focused
Too many affiliates try promoting a new offer or niche and then jump to another one when they either get bored or hear about the latest hot program. Very few promotions are going to hit a home run as soon as you start running them. Most of them will improve as you refine and optimize your marketing initiatives (keyword lists, landing page creative, etc.). So, don't get discouraged if a new campaign doesn't produce big results as soon as you start running it. Stick with it and make adjustments to improve performance over time. Two easy mistakes to make here are to either stop running a new campaign before you have a chance to find out if it will work or kicking off a new promotion and then just letting it run without paying much attention to it as you move on to promoting the next campaign. Stay focused on each of your campaigns to give them the best chance to succeed.
Analyze your results
This may seem obvious, but proper performance analysis is a step that many affiliates don't pay as much attention to as they should. You should be going beyond simple analysis (is a campaign profitable or not) to dig into the performance details. If you are running a PPC campaign with 100's of keywords, you wouldn't just look at the totals to know if the promotion is working or not. You may have some keywords that are dragging your performance down, while others are highly profitable. But, if you don't take the time to dig into the numbers, you might never know that by adjusting your keywords and bids you could turn an underperforming campaign into one that is solidly profitable. This holds true for all of your marketing initiatives. Dig into the numbers, ramp up tactics that are working well, and look for ways to optimize initiatives that are underperforming.
Know when to switch lanes
While you need to give yourself time to optimize a program and see if you can make it profitable, you don't want to keep banging your head against the wall indefinitely on a campaign that just doesn't work. You have to know when it is time to stop running a campaign and move on to other opportunities. There isn't really a magic formula to know exactly when enough is enough. Certainly if you are consistently spending money on a campaign and everything you try to optimize it fails, then it is time to cut your losses. It may help to set a budget amount that you would be willing to spend to find out if you can make a campaign work. If you hit the limit and haven't made any progress, then it is time to move on.
Leverage your affiliate managers
Remember that your affiliate manager should be a valuable resource for you. Ask them for advice on offers to test, trends in the industry you can leverage, ways to improve your creative, etc. A good affiliate manager should do more for you than just answer questions about pixel placement or get you approved to run a new offer.
Getting your Affiliate Marketing Business out of Low Gear
By: Tom Wozniak
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